Well I "lied". The skinny farm was not the first thing I worked on. That cost money.. and I purchased a new van [bike hauler] so my money went there.

We were a little slow getting out to work on the trails. I had [have] painful tendonitis in my right knee. [and now "tennis" elbow]

Clean up has been slow this spring. This winter was tough on the trails. We have much of it cleaned up.. but not all of it. We do have more than enough to lead some good rides. Once we got a bit of clean up done, we switch it up, moving between clean up, new construction, or polishing up up trails that were roughed out last fall. We got 2 new trails mostly done.

The I am liking my new small loppers. My new big lopers are huge. They cut well but are not something I would by themselves for roughing out a trail. I did purchase a new chainsaw. One of the little Arborist top handled saws. I love it. Actually I used it to rough out on of these new trails. The other was mostly done with loppers [it does depend on the trail].

I am still really loving my cordless Sawzall. I use it mostly for taking out the small "chicken neck" stumps. I of course used it on the new trails. I did have some of last falls "roughed out" trails to do also. On one trail I decided to count the stumps I removed, 194 on one trail. We used to take these out with a hatchet.. which is a LOT more work, and in real rocky areas not doable that way at all.

glenn

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
Kahlil Gibran

We don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.
George Bernard Shaw

We did do a lot more trail work this again this year. The winter clean up was rather brutal this year again. We have built a fair amount of new trails made. Late fall is the best time for this, when the leaves are down.. and the grasses, ferns etc. are dead. Some of the later fall stuff is just roughed out [although rideable]. They will receive more work next season. In addition to longer trails, we did build a lot of little connector trails. 100-150 feet. Things that really helped with the flow of the network. As an example 3 Bridge Trail is almost always ridden out away from the house. There are some ups and downs to it, but it is gradually uphill in the direct we ride. Towards the end of it, we turn left on another trail.. a good uphill.. and then loop around a fast dual track section over to Dug trail. Well on one ride I popped off of Dug and headed toward and back on 3 Bridge, in the other direction. "Wow is this fun!!" In that direction.. the ending intersection doesn't flow that well, unless continuing back to the house, but by adding a turn to the left.. across the brook again.. up a short steep hill, one can more easily connect to a few other trails.

While I am of the philosophy that any trail can be a flow trail, if you are good enough, we did build some easier fun trails. These received a bit of earth work, using the rototiller, Rogue Hoe, our green ez dig and fire rakes. While I love [and my more regular riders love] our technical trails. These faster trails are a blast. To balance these out. We did build some pretty technical stuff.. some ledgy lumpy stuff.

We did also do a bit of dual track work.. ditching.. and adding culverts. We also added a dual track. It was a path that had been logged but was pretty wet. Our neighbor Lee wanted a trail through it and had rough it out. We did a bit of work on that, adding culverts etc. There are still places that get wet pretty easily, so it will need more earth work.

We did host another Time Trial [part of a multi club series], and our Spooktacular. We decided to combine them.. to save us some work, and to make it more worthwhile for those that travel some distance to come. Combining them was a mistake. While we didn't have to clean the trails up twice.. Marking the course took a bit of time.. and like a lot of the rest of it.. was last minute work. We also upped our pumpkin count, which didn't help. We had 150 carved pumpkins on our trail. Over all we had around 50 people come… but not all that many for the time trial.. nor that many for the haunted trail walk. I suspect we won't host another time trial.. The Spooktacular? I am not sure.

I still haven't added any more skinnies to the Skinny Farm.. but we did do more clearing in the area, and hauled out more logs for construction. New tools.. we purchased a small arborist saw. I am loving that. I end up doing most of my roughing out work with that. Work that I would normally use loppers on. Even though exhausting… I can get much more work done, in a short amount of time.

We recently got our first significant snow storm.. which will probably halt our work until next year.

glenn

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
Kahlil Gibran

We don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.
George Bernard Shaw

Some one had asked for a GPS trace of our trails. At the time I didn't have a working GPS. I did purchase a Garmin for cycling a year or so back. We have found… as I suspected, It does not work that great out here. In many places our trails are too close together.. or to convoluted, we do not get accurate info. Most of it also has tree cover. I personally seem to have worse luck. My Garmin will ALWAYS show at least 10% less milage than everyone else. Sometimes it's been as much as 40% off.

I use strava with it my gps.. and that is really bad here. I will come back from a ride and it will tell me I set a new KOM on such and such trail.. and I didn't even ride that trail.

I am not sure I will ever put the time in to make a map either. For one.. as often as we make trails.. it would go out of date pretty quickly. Although I think pretty soon, we will have to slow down… [stop] new construction. It is getting to a point that maintanence is a real chore. It is also not often I have people riding here without me. The trails are not laid out in such a way that would be entirely safe having different groups out there… We have places with fast intersections that could be dangerous with different riders riding on their own.

We have also had requests for video. I don't have a camera yet. I would like one, but so far much of what I have seen doesn't really accurately depict a trail. It always shows things much slower and tamer than they are.

glenn

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
Kahlil Gibran

We don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.
George Bernard Shaw